You are going to laugh at this, but the last time I made freezer meals I was a newlywed! That’s right – there were 2 of us eating! Once I started having kids, I sort of chickened out when it came to freezer meals. Plus, I was convinced they were going to take up way too much of my precious time and precious freezer space.
A few weeks ago, another blogging homeschool mom of 7 mentioned to me that she had put together an ecourse on how to quickly make Freezer Meals, and I thought – hmmmm…if she can do it with 7, surely I can do it with my brood.
Plus, her freezer looked absolutely amazing! Seriously – watch the short promo video on her site – that’s her REAL freezer! *swoon*
Yesterday afternoon before making out my weekly meal plan and grocery list, I binged watched her video course, and was pleasantly surprised to see that she didn’t say you needed a lot of fancy gadgets, and she didn’t have recipes that contained a lot of extra steps. In fact, she does a lot of what she calls Dump Recipes. (The Pro & Masters Plans contain all of her Dump Recipes as part of the package.)
So, guess what I did?! I used her recipes to make my menu plan and used her shopping list to create my list for today, and I’m going to give this a shot!
A few things to note:
*I’m only doing 5 days worth of meals. This is something Sharla calls “Mini Sessions.” If it goes well, I think I’ll try for a bit more so I can have some put back for when baby comes.
Another reason I’m only doing 5 is because this weekend we are celebrating my oldest child’s beginning of college with special meals and snacks of his choosing. (By the way, my son isn’t actually leaving home because the college is nearby, but this is a tradition my husband’s mom started when he was going to college, so we decided to carry on the tradition.)
*I mixed and matched her meal plans. I decided to pull from several of her Beef Dump meal plans, so I wasn’t able to take the shopping list AS IS, but I hardly ever do anything AS IS, so what else is new!?! I also tried to choose meals that used meat I had on hand already.
*I doubled most of the recipes. I have older kids and 10 people in total eating, so after looking at the meals, I decided it would be best to double most of the recipes.
*I’m planning to shop, prep, AND put together the meals in one day. Today, is my normal shopping day and I have a lot of hands to help make this work, so my plan is to shop and then have my big kids prep, and then we’ll all work together to put the meals in bags. Again, we’ll see if I actually accomplish that!
*I’m anxious to see how it affects the grocery budget. Sharla – the creator of Freezer Meals 101 – often does an entire month, so that would definitely up the budget, but where I’m planning to only do 5 days worth, I anticipate seeing a bit of a decrease in the budget because I think the meals will be simpler than what I usually put together. I’ll keep track and let you know! (I do have to keep in mind that buying my son’s party foods may not allow the budget to reflect a real change.)
Sharla also has some great methods for freezer cooking from your own recipes, and easy ideas for making your every day meal prep easier with freeze ahead components. I’m definitely going to start thinking through this as Baby Day nears. I want to make meal prep easy on the kids and Ty because they will be doing the majority of the cooking while I recover.
I’m actually super excited to see how this works for us. Sharla mentions celebrating when you are finished, so I’m mulling over how the kids and I can celebrate tonight when we finish. Maybe a movie and a big bowl of popcorn!
Would you like to learn more about Freezer Meals 101? CLICK HERE!
And if you have any tips for me, drop me a line!
I also wanted to alert you to the fact that Money Saving Mom’s Make Over Your Mornings and Make Over Your Evenings Courses are on sale right now! (August 8-15)! With school starting up, you might want to work on those morning and evening routines. *ahem*
They are $10 a piece, BUT, if you buy one at $10, you have the opportunity to buy the other at $7!
Karyn says
I do major meal freezing before a baby arrives. Starting about three months before the due date, about twice a week I’ll quadruple whatever we’re already eating and freeze half of it. For some reason, I just don’t keep it up during “normal times” though. I cook a lot on Sunday for the week to come but I don’t do the freezer thing. Don’t forget useful things like breakfast burritos and muffins, not just meals 🙂
Jen Holm says
I love freezer meal prep! I don’t usually do it on a regular basis. But I always do it in my last month of pregnancy and have a full month of meals stashed away, plus we have always been blessed with 2 weeks of a meal train, so after having a baby I don’t return to normal cooking duty for a good 6 weeks! My hubby doesn’t cook and my wee little children are way too young to chip in so it’s the best way to protect myself from having to worry about dinners postpartum.
Also here and there I will double (or even triple) whatever it is I’m cooking that day and immediately have a couple meals in the freezer. I find that It’s super easy with ground meat recipes and soups. And Kim at Raising Olives has a great one called African Beef and Rice, but we skip the rice and have it over mashed potatoes, and it goes right into a freezer bag, almost zero prep involved. Of course that all takes planning ahead to have enough ingredients and if we have the money in the budget to spend ahead. It’s sort of scary buying so much at once (sticker shock at the grocery store), but then you figure that it’s all done and that money won’t be spent later when you’re eating the freezer meals. And I only pick about 5 or 6 meals to do and make a few batches of each so that I can save money buying ingredients in bulk and it saves time in the kitchen working with the same ingredients rather than a wide variety of things.
Susan Geddes says
well…I dabble in this, but we eat a lot of meals that aren’t any easier, frozen. We’re not a fussy family, but the younger two still prefer to see what they’re eating, we have two diabetics who find it hard to count the carbs if everything’s all mixed in, and I have to watch with acidic and spicy foods, so very often it’s meat and two veg anyway rather than curries and chilis and then the slo-cooker is more useful. I suppose I could freeze mashed potatoes and veg dishes, and probably would if there was a new addition coming along. We did have a freezer lasagne the day of the local agricultural show and that was luxury, and I’ll sometimes do scalloped potato type things. I liked the “Frozen Assets” book and there’s a few things in there have become firm favourites, like Holiday Breakfast casserole; the other one by Mimi Wilson was too complicated. Remember to leave your pasta a bit underdone, and I’ve found that things done in the slo-cooker generally don’t freeze well – they fall apart and taste reheated, although baked beans seem to do ok. Baked goods are useful, too – extra waffles, or an undecorated sponge cake, and I guess pizza bases would be handy too. And soups, of course. Another thing that might help – being the owner of an ancient gas hob that goes off it you set it too low, I do my rice in the oven. A spray of oil in the dish, bit of salt and twice as much warm water as rice, and it takes an hour. If that was ready, anyone could just switch the oven on for you at the right time and you would have to watch pots. I’m not posting a picture of my freezer though lol x
Susan Geddes says
*WOULDN’T have to watch pots
Indasa Butler says
The last time I did freezer meals was just before my mom came to visit for two weeks for her vacation. That was just before we took our mid-year break a little over a year ago.
We live in the mountains and don’t have the big name stores near by so, it was a four hour shopping day. First, to the mechanic, then to the local store. Next, to the store that usually has all things for a lower price and then to the higher priced store that is sure to have certain ingredients not normally found. (I use that store sparingly.)
After that journey, there was no possible way I could do prep, so I did prep the next day. I suggest to everyone to have snacks handy if kids are going to be around. That way, they have energy to help.
The third day was “cook” day for us. What saved me was doing it in assembly line fashion. There was a table for the prepped items and a table for the finished and packaged items – if they needed to cool before freezing.
After all that, we “celebrated” with foot massages and facials. (I have an avocado tree in the backyard.) OMG! My feet!!
Now, I have to find ways to motivate myself to batch cook when no one is coming to visit. 🙂
Amy says
I concur! My feet were killing me!
Brittany says
In anticipation of #6 (who is now 6 weeks old!), I made a bunch of freezer meals. I ended up making about 30, and we’re still eating off of them!
I went through all of our family’s favorites and made a list of the ones that could freeze well, basically skipping the egg dishes and salads. 🙂 Then I divided those by the meat they used and did a freezer day for each meat. Since we were already using our usual recipes, we already knew we liked everything and that it would make enough to feed us.
My kids helped with the assembly and we did a chicken, beef, sausage, and meatless prep day. Each one only took about an hour. I cooked the meat before putting it in the bag, but everything else was raw. It ended up tasting much better than when I had previously fully cooked meals for the freezer. Most of the meals I just had to dump in the crockpot or a pot on the stove and make an easy side to go along with it. It’s been a huge blessing to not have to cook for my hungry crew since our little lady arrived! I’m thinking about making some more to keep in my freezer for crazy days or when someone needs a meal unexpectedly.
S.T. says
Please update us on how it went. I tried making a monthly meal plan along with some freezer cooking, but I think I bit off too much at once. Also, it ended up costing us way more. Did that happen to anyone else? Additionally, I found it hard to actually find time to pre-make the meals, so I didn’t use up all of the ingredients I bought. We fell back into our more normal meals. Also, I liked the crock-pot freezer meals in ziplock bags, like she seems to suggest. My problem was one bag wasn’t enough for our family. I guess I felt wasteful using two bag for each meal. It just seemed too complicated.
Amy says
We shot video as we did it, so I’m hoping my son can get to editing it this weekend and I can post it and an update on the blog next week! There were pros and cons for sure!